Portuguese Food in Hawaiʻi — The Malasada, the Sausage, and the Sweet Bread

Portuguese immigration to Hawaiʻi began in earnest in 1878, when the Bureau of Immigration recruited workers from the Azores and Madeira islands to work the sugar plantations. About 20,000 Portuguese arrived in the following decades, primarily from these Atlantic archipelagos rather than mainland Portugal. They came as skilled workers — many were dairy farmers, craftsmen, and supervisors — and they brought their food with them. Three items from that tradition are now core to Hawaiʻi's food identity.

The Malasada

The malasada is a Portuguese fried dough — unleavened, egg-enriched, deep-fried, and rolled in granulated sugar while still hot. In Portugal and the Azores, malasadas are a Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday) tradition — fried dough before Lent. In Hawaiʻi, they became an everyday food rather than a holiday treat. Leonard's Bakery in Kapahulu has been selling malasadas since 1952 and is the canonical source — the line on weekends wraps around the building. The key: eat them hot, within minutes of leaving the fryer.

Portuguese Sausage

Portuguese sausage (linguiça) appears on Hawaiʻi breakfast plates, in saimin broth, as a musubi filling, and as a standalone side at plate lunch counters. Linguiça — pork sausage seasoned with garlic, paprika, and red wine vinegar — is found in the supermarket refrigerator section and in breakfast platters across every diner in the state. It is the one Portuguese food that has fully assimilated into everyday Hawaiʻi cooking without being recognized as Portuguese anymore.

Portuguese Sweet Bread

Portuguese sweet bread (pão doce) is an egg-enriched, slightly sweet white bread that arrived with the plantation workers. In Hawaiʻi, it evolved into the round, golden-crusted sweet rolls sold at King's Hawaiian (founded by Robert Taira in Hilo in 1950) and at grocery store bakeries across the state. King's Hawaiian sweet bread is now a mass-market product sold nationally, but the original Hawaiʻi version — denser, eggier, less sweet — is still made by smaller bakeries.

Shrove Tuesday in Hawaiʻi

The malasada tradition lives on as Malasada Day — the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday — when Leonard's Bakery and other Portuguese bakeries sell malasadas by the thousands. The line at Leonard's on Malasada Day begins before sunrise. It is one of Honolulu's more sincere food traditions.